There’s only one Laird Hamilton.
(This bit came from The Grit! podcast segment Pros in the Wild wherein dear listeners phone, or email, in their encounters with professional surfers in the… wild, I guess. Enjoy.)
Hey David and Chas, I’m reaching out from the beautiful North Shore of Oahu where I transplanted myself over twenty years ago. Sidenote: I almost feel like anyone on the North Shore shouldn’t be allowed to contribute to this segment as we are constantly surrounded by the worlds best pro tour surfers, local legends, former pro’s, you name it. Over the years I’ve had a ton of memorable encounters with legendary surfers, but there’s one encounter worth discussing because it altered my perspective of how a wave can be suffered, and my perspective on one of the most famous surfers of all time, Laird Hamilton. And although this encounter occurred 15 years, I can recall it vividly.
Now, just to put this encounter into perspective a little, I was in high school in the mid- 90’s. A friend showed me those “Strapped” VHS surf videos of the whole Maui crew towing giant Jaws. Of course I already knew who Laird was and was aware of his windsurfing prowess and of course I had seen the movie “North Shore” a million times but seeing how much better of a tow surfer Laird was than everyone and seeing the huge barrels he got and the big power carves he did really made me realize he was very special and worthy of all-time-legend status in the realm of tow surfing. If you consider the surfing he did at Jaws in the 90’s or and of course the Millennium wave At Teahupoo it’s hard to argue he wasn’t the greatest tow surfer ever, until maybe Kai Lenny in the past few years (so that’s like a 30 year run as being the all-time best tow surfer- –not bad…)
Another bit of context here, Stand Up Paddling was exploding in Hawaii at the time. And tons of unskilled people were going out into larger surf in crowded lineups and reeking absolutely havoc. So while I admired Laird’s talent, I also blamed Laird completely for the entire Surf SUP plague.
Anyway, my story takes place on Kauai. I was surfing a playful 4 foot reef with about 15 locals, everyone getting their share. All of a sudden Laird showed up on this huge Stand up Paddle board and I couldn’t believe it. This frickin guy had a full Ipod strapped to his thick bicep with water proof head phones on! I had seen joggers with this kind of Ipod set up but a surfer in the ocean? Never. He came out and wasted no time going to work. This frickin guy just started doing circles around the lineup. He never stopped moving. He’d catch a wave, do all those dumb stand up paddle turns putting the paddle behind him to mimic a layback (cuz you can’t really do shit on those big dumb boards). He’d kick out, paddle back out immediately, make a right turn to get past everyone, and then the very next wave that come big or small and he would stroke right into it and do this again and again and again and again WHILE WEARING FRICKIN’ HEADPHONES IN THE OCEAN!
And maybe what was more annoying was these locals all seemed to know him, and were not only not-bothered by this but they were even cheering him on. They’d be hooting “ya Laird” but he couldn’t hear them cuz HE HAD HEADPHONES ON IN THE OCEAN! To this day I’ve never seen any surfer ever so oblivious to others in the water.
So we’re on this beautiful tropical island in the middle of the pacific and you can see giant water falls in these majestic green mountains, with perfect nuggety clean 4 foot waves and this entitled frickin douche is hogging all the waves while listening to his iPod! So now I’m like screw this guy. I don’t care about his legend Jaws towing status or pioneering hydrofoil bullshit. Beyond that, he’s a selfish douche and I’m burning him on the next wave.
And then, he did something that completely retarded my angst. This perfect set wave comes in and surprise surprise guess who’s going again for his 16th wave in a half hour? But from the moment of his approach, something is different. The wave is steeper with a double up building right at the take-off. But counter-intuitively, Laird is paddling way slower than he has for all his other waves. I was baffled and couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t paddling harder to avoid a steep drop on that big dumb SUP, he was liable to miss the wave entirely, or at the bare minimum get pitched, which is what I was dying to see. Then he shuffles his feet towards the front of the board. He is now on the top of the wave, barely any forward momentum, and his board is see-sawing on the crest of this ledging, overhead wave. At this very precarious moment, in front of all 15 gawkers, he calmy gives one last paddle and shuffles his feet all the way into a cheater 5. The lip pitches the back half of his board toward the beach and he slides backwards on the nose down the drop, 180s so by the time his in the trough he’s facing the beach and shuffling backwards into his normal stance and the board completes the 360. A flawlessly executed Helicopter take off on a big, dumb SUP! There was no stumbling or excessive leaning towards one side or the other. He was in complete control the entire time all while being serrended by his iPod (probably that “hey now you’re an all-star, get your game on, go play” song)).
He spun the whole board around in about 2 seconds and kept going like nothing happened. Now look, I’m not a fan of high performance longboarding and I remember seeing the helicopter move done a lot in the 90’s and thinking sure its probably hard to do but it’s kind of gimmicky—- but to do one off a take-off on a dumb Stand up Paddle board no-less, on a wave with some juice, with absolute flawless execution- I know it sounds ridiculous but it was and is still one of the most radical things I’ve ever seen in the sport of surfing and I’ve seen some crazy shit in person on the North Shore over the past 20 plus years.
I just can’t emphasize enough how impressive it was. Pure mastery by a master of ocean board riding, if there ever was one.
I left the water thinking he may be a dick in the water but this guy is one of the most skilled surfers ever on earth. At that point I truly believed only one guy on earth could have done what he did. I hate to say it, but he went up several notches in my book after seeing that.
He’d drop down again over the next decade with stupid stuff like not acknowledging paddling Jaws is more challenging than towing it, or colliding with and breaking the arm of a surfer during that Hurricane Marie swell at Malibu.
But that helicopter take-off was frickin gangster.
